Summit School District leaders are hoping to remedy frustrations brought forward by the District Accountability Committee whose members say they’ve struggled with a lack of guidance and communication. 

District and school-level accountability committees are required for all Colorado public schools and generally consist of district parents, teachers and staff who serve in a volunteer capacity. Under state statute, the groups are tasked with providing recommendations and feedback to district leaders on policy and budget proposals. 

“Historically, as a (committee), we focus on statutes. But statutes are very broad,” District Accountability Committee Co-Chair Milena Quiros told board of education members during an April 25 meeting. 

“One of the things we’ve been talking about in the past is we are a board committee, so we need to reestablish the relationship between the (District Accountability Committee) and the board,” she continued. 

Members said they need clearer guidance on their charges as an accountability committee and for more open communication channels with board members.

“I think the (District Accountability Committee) has been frustrated in the past few years because we pass what we believe is input on to the board and to schools, but we don’t get feedback,” said Co-Chair Lorna Frey. “So it feels like a one-way direction.” 

Issues came to a head earlier this school year when former accountability committee Co-Chair Sara Stallings announced her resignation during a Feb. 15 board meeting that district officials said was unexpected. 

Stallings described facing obstacles when requesting student assessment data this past fall, less inclusion in the decision making of district policy and difficulty communicating directly with board members. She also noted feeling that district officials had a negative view of committee members and were critical of the committee’s “perceived lack of inclusivity” even as it made efforts to diversify its membership. 

Stallings comments during the Feb. 15 meeting were followed by remarks from other parent volunteers who said they felt relationships between district leaders and volunteer committees had become strained. 

Roughly a month before Stalling’s resignation, during a Jan. 19 board of education retreat, Superintendent Tony Byrd made a comment in response to a training session about feeling “drained” by the districtwide and school-level committees. The comments, which were recorded, were first published in an April 4 article by the Washington Times. 

Byrd, in an interview with the Summit Daily News, said he regretted the comments and added it came out of a moment of “frustration and tire and fatigue.” Stallings told the Summit Daily that she was not aware of Byrd’s comments prior to her resignation. 

During the April 25 meeting, board members called on the need for more feedback between themselves and District Accountability Committee members. 

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Board President Consuelo Redhorse noted that state statute only requires one meeting between school boards and accountability committees, adding that the district’s committee has historically only met with the board to discuss recommendations on unified improvement plans and budgets.

“I think there’s a lot of times when the (District Accountability Committee) recommendations and considerations are fed into (unified improvement plans) recommendations or budget recommendations. It’s the way that it’s communicated back that is not hitting,” Redhorse said. 

Redhorse continued, “In building this relationship, we’re hoping to be able to find out what works for DAC, what works for the board in terms of creating this feedback loop.”

A key focus heading into next school year will also be to more clearly define the board’s expectations and charges for the committee, which Redhorse outlined in a letter to committee members prior to the meeting. 

The letter proposes the committee commit to seven of nine responsibilities outlined by the Colorado Department of Education. Those are:

• Making budget recommendations
• Making recommendations on improvement plans
• Annually determining with the school board areas and issues that the committee should study and make recommendations on 
• Consulting with stakeholders with regard to federally funded activities
• Publicizing opportunities to serve and soliciting parents to serve on the committee
• Assisting the district in implementing parent engagement policy
• Assisting school officials to increase parents’ engagement with educators

Two other responsibilities, one to review charter school applications and another to provide input to principles on assessment tools to measure and evaluate student academic growth as it relates to teacher evaluations, were removed from the committee’s expectations. 

Redhorse said the district currently does not have any charter schools, making that responsibility a moot point for the committee, but added “if at some point we hit that, then that would certainly be something that we bring back up.”

Regarding input on tools for academic growth as it relates to teacher evaluations, Redhorse said that task is already being carried out by a group known as the Advisory Personnel Performance Evaluation Council, or 1338 council. 

Byrd said outlining these expectations should begin to bring more clarity to the accountability committee’s role moving forward. 

“I think simply naming that these are the areas for you all to focus on will be very helpful,” Byrd said. “And then it will help filter out ideas that aren’t bad ideas — they might be important ideas — but they’re not in the purview or in the area that the (accountability committee) is to address.”

Byrd added, “I look forward to ongoing conversations about how to diversify the DAC and to work toward representing the demographics of the district, which is also part of the state’s hope.”

The District Accountability Committee is set to meet again with board members at an upcoming May meeting to provide their feedback on the proposal.